


That I May Flower To Men

by brewsternorth



Series: Brackish Water Ballads [1]
Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1950s, Alternate Universe - Historical Divergence, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bisexual Harry D. S. Goodsir, Dinner & a movie, Disabled Characters, M/M, Not Beta Read, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Past Internalized Homophobia, Past Recovery, Period-Typical Ableism (mentioned), Polyamory Negotiations, Pre-Relationship, background Goodsir/Silna | Lady Silence, background James Fitzjames/Francis Crozier, period-typical anti-Communism (past)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-16 18:53:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29458545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brewsternorth/pseuds/brewsternorth
Summary: Harry D. S. Goodsir, neurosurgeon and amateur naturalist, auditions a prospective boyfriend. Alexander MacDonald, detoxification specialist and amateur swimmer, dips a rare toe in the dating pool. It’s a learning experience.For Terror Rarepair Week 2021, “Valentine’s Day”
Relationships: Harry D. S. Goodsir/Alexander McDonald
Series: Brackish Water Ballads [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2163753
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7
Collections: @terror_exe Prompt Fills, The Terror Rarepair Week 2021





	That I May Flower To Men

**Author's Note:**

> Also inspired by this terror_exe tweet: _[“ok, so picture lemon juice, the end of vanity and eating sounds - that's alexander macdonald”](https://twitter.com/terror_exe/status/1353042766125797377)_
> 
> This story occurs in an alternate New York where, approximately simultaneously with the relocation of UN headquarters, [these new ten indications of a civilized community](https://yesterdaysprint.tumblr.com/post/629436501796732928/cyril-connollys-ten-major-indications-of-a) have become law in 1949, as a new grand experiment. Another upcoming fic in this universe, whose plot I refer to in this fic, will be a "Rear Window" fusion, though this specific fic is not.

#### February 14, 1955

#### Midtown Manhattan, New York City

It turned out to be a good thing he hadn’t availed himself of the popcorn at the Broadway Theater. Alexander was suffering the same unpleasant swimming head and unsteady balance as when he’d given into his old vice; and him so many years sober. “Cinerama Holiday” had promised, and delivered, a sight-and-sound cinematic experience more immersive than any other, and as a transatlantic and trans-continental travelogue it was fine. But there had been moments of white-knuckle terror along with the easy glory. The shots from aboard the California Zephyr were so pristine you could almost smell the mountain air the train had thundered through; but had it really been necessary to have an all-encompassing point-of-view of rocketing down a mountain aboard an Alpine bobsled? Or being aboard a naval aviator’s plane on approach to a carrier-landing?

Ah well. The main result had been that his companion for the evening had been favorably impressed with the whole thing, which was the intention. The rest of the audience tumbling out of the doors and onto the sidewalk, like themselves, were about equally divided between those who throve on the excitement and those who were just happy to accompany the thrivers. Doctor Goodsir had been almost more enthusiastic about the action sequences than the dialogue: as they exited he had bubbled over with boyish delight at the wonders on-screen and the technical achievement of it all. It’d been hard for Alexander not to smile along with him, headache or no.

Goodsir stopped short on the corner of Broadway and Fifty-Second Street, his prattle tailing off mid-sentence. He frowned, and started fiddling with something within his coat at about sternal level. Alexander couldn’t begin to guess what. “All right?” he enquired, then “Don’t t-take too long,” hunching against a suddenly icy gust of wind rounding on them like an angry animal with claws unsheathed.

“Sorry,” said Goodsir abstractedly, grimacing and still twiddling, “not so easy with mittens on. Just got to–” The next words were at a lower, more conversational volume. “That’s fixed it. Let’s go.” He strode forward, and winced as a taxi honked furiously at him. Alexander, without even turning his head, held out a forbidding hand while he ushered Goodsir across at a fast clip, keen to seek the lee side of the downtown corner.

It occurred to Alexander to ask, once they’d made that far shore: “Where’re we going, exactly?”

Goodsir blinked, and turned to face him. “What’s that?”

“I asked where are we headed.”

Goodsir flashed a faintly embarrassed grin. “Oh, if you’ve no objection, there’s a place to eat close by. I don’t know about you, I could use a bite, and the both of us should thaw out before our fingers are the worse for the wind-chill.”

“No objection indeed,” said Alexander with feeling. “Is there coffee at this place?”

Goodsir’s smile broadened. “The best in town.”

* * *

It was fair to say Alexander hadn’t been expecting an automat. He glanced around, trying to let his eyes adjust to the bright lights, the gleaming white tiles on the wall, the chrome-steel fittings. And, yes, there was the customary mammoth coffee-urn in the far corner, humming faintly. The whole place looked as immaculate as though the last twenty years had been a mere bad dream. Goodsir was blinking myopically while he wiped his fogged spectacle-lenses with a tail of his scarf. Alexander had been about to dig in his pockets for nickels before it occurred to him that this automat had no coin-slots by the hatches, and no cashier’s kiosk in the center of the bustling floor. Strange. There was something else missing, but Alexander couldn’t put his finger on it for the moment—

There was a rustle as of a handful of dollar bills being stuffed into a box behind them. Alexander peered, startled, at Goodsir, as the latter returned his billfold to his pocket. 

“It runs on the honor system,” Goodsir explained. “They get good business out of me and my friends.” He lifted a dismissive finger. “You paid for the movie-tickets: this is my treat.”

Alexander opened his mouth, shut it, and nodded. Fair enough. It wasn’t as though the old rules of romance—who paid and who permitted, who proposed and who consented, who led and who followed—applied between the two of them, or to men like them. Or, really, to anyone hereabouts in the last five or six years. Not that chivalry was dead, exactly; just replaced by a more general-purpose compassion, worthy of a truly cosmopolitan universal city. Still took some getting used to, though. The great experiment that was the Experimental State was comparatively young, as yet.

Goodsir flicked a wave, almost a salute, to one of the other diners, a sturdy-looking middle-aged woman seated in the near corner who gave a brief wave in return. Before Alexander could ruminate on the meaning of it, Goodsir was plucking at his sleeve, speaking in an undertone. “Come on, let’s make our selections. Trays are over here. Make sure to leave room for dessert, the pie here is delightful.”

Maybe it’d been the short walk in the chill weather, but Alexander found he _was_ hungry, after all.

* * *

It had been an unspectacular but entirely satisfactory supper. What it lacked in elegance of presentation, it made up for in a comfortable sort of good taste. No surprise that this automat, delighting in the monicker of “Eat Me,” had attracted so much custom, and from such an eclectic crowd. As Goodsir had predicted, the coffee and the pie were the outstanding things about it, putting Horn and Hardart’s best fare to shame. Alexander decided on the spot that he’d return here whenever he next went to see a show in Midtown, alone or in company.

Wait. 

That was it. 

The thing that was missing from this automat, the whole time, was a soundtrack. No radio playing, no piped music coming in from the ceiling, and little in the way of conversations from the other diners. Only the muted clatter, floating through the hatches, of the kitchen at work behind them; the plates being filled with this and that, the empties washed. The coffee-urn continuing to hum like a contented cat. Forks and knives on plates. The sounds of people chewing food, more than usually loud in the absence of other noise. If it hadn’t been for the chewing, Alexander might have fancied himself in the main reading room of the public library at Forty-Second Street. Small wonder he’d not felt like making small talk with Goodsir, despite the ample opportunity. The silence was infectious. Which made a welcome change from the blare of a movie or musical, Alexander could admit, whether you had all your hearing or not.

He cleared his throat as quietly as possible, telegraphing it with a knuckle to his lips. Strange to be timid of making too much noise, instead of the other kind of timid, but he had been emboldened by a quartet of youngsters of unknown genders and uninhibited (if noiseless) closeness seated a couple of tables over, doing precisely what he was about to request of his companion.

“Yes?” Goodsir offered, with a birdlike tilt of the head.

“Thought I might. Ahem. Offer you a mouthful of this, if you’re amenable.”

“Certainly. For two reasons.”

“And what are those?”

“Your ad mentioned ‘companionship’, and what is that but breaking bread with a friend? Literally the definition of the original Latin term. Piecrust counts for that purpose, I think.” Goodsir chuckled, gently. It was a good sound. “The other reason is, I only got lemon meringue pie because that’s what I always get, and your cherry pie looks very good.”

Alexander could sympathize: having a habitual pie was probably a lot less taxing on the mind than being faced with a score of different equally appealing options. Indecision had gnawed at him for a nearly unbearably long time before he’d finally made his pick. “Should I, ah, get another fork?”

“Two forks, if we’re being scientific,” Goodsir said. “I know it’s not as hygienic, but don’t put yourself out. If we’re breaking bread together let’s use our own cutlery for it.”

Alexander could go along with that, he supposed. “Then you’re offering–?”

“I _am_ offering, yes,” Goodsir said with a little impatience. Then: “Sorry, I’m used to being condescended to on account of this.” He tapped the hearing-aid on his chest, gently.

“I’ll do my best not to,” Alexander said. He could only imagine the echo of such pain, he knew. “Tell me if I fail.”

“You can be sure of that,” Goodsir said, with a kind of sidelong nod. “Go on: eat.”

The lemon meringue pie and the cherry were indeed equally delicious, they both agreed. Alexander twitched surreptitiously in his seat to get more comfortable: the pleased little noises his companion was making were sorely testing his self-control. To say nothing of the precise shape of his mouth and how it moved around his fork. A good thing they didn’t have to get to their feet in any kind of a hurry. Even in these liberated times there was such a thing as putting on too much of a show.

“Say ‘ah’,” Goodsir murmured, holding out his laden fork.

“Now that,” said Alexander, “is my line.” But he opened his mouth for the morsel anyway. Goodsir had a bedside manner you still rarely saw in the surgical side of a hospital’s staff. If he wanted to retire into general practice, Alexander had no doubt he’d excel at it, just as long as he didn’t mind the tedium.

Although Goodsir’s precise touch as a surgeon was absolutely not to be underestimated. Or his understated dominance, for that matter. He might not have the muscular strength to grapple a body by main force, but he looked to have a strength of will that was formidable. Exactly what Alexander had been looking for. The possibilities were to shiver at. A man who could tie his paramours in knots just with a few well-placed words, a quirk of an eyebrow, a gesture.

Alexander steadied himself, deciding to table his licentious imaginings until later in the night. Whether in company or otherwise, his fantasies could wait until then. It’d be all too easy to exchange one compulsion for another, even if this one was now legal and better for his liver than the drink. (Still difficult for him not to think of it as a vice, to associate it with the shame that had partly driven him to the bottle in the first place. Even if he theoretically no longer had to hide his tendencies from all but the most backward-looking of his fellow-citizens.) Besides, he had to focus carefully, or he’d be administering a faceful of pie to his companion.

Something about Goodsir’s gaze made it difficult for Alexander to focus on it directly. He had a canniness of expression that was both comforting and disturbing, certainly in extended doses. On the other hand, if one focused solely on his well-turned-out nose, or his lips (perhaps not his lips), like an airline pilot lining up with a beacon the better to arrive at an airfield, the view was still appealing, and Goodsir would have no difficulty reading one’s expression or speech. It was a sweet little nose, by all accounts, even partially obscured by the bridge of his spectacles. Mercifully, Goodsir never asked why Alexander’s eyes were on it. At times, others had asked him if their noses had a flaw of some sort; but not he.

Bite by bite, alone and together, they got to the last crumbs on their plates, talking in low voices about nothing in particular. The weather, the movies (Goodsir had gone to see “Brigadoon”, but had not been terribly impressed with it; Alexander had been too much of a Scot to want the slightest thing to do with it as soon as he’d seen the trailer), odds and ends of local news, ditto doctors’ gossip, the subway. Entirely pleasant little inconsequentialities, such as friends might exchange. If this encounter was to go no further, Alexander would be pleased to have Goodsir as that sort of boon-companion, the ice between them broken by that much.

Though Alexander had protested at first, Goodsir was the one to clear their table once they were done; but he was a nimble hand at it, hardly slowed even by the sheer numbers of fellow-diners who’d taken up seats while they’d been eating. The advantage of familiar territory, Alexander supposed. He took the time to get back into his coat, thankful that he was no longer at risk of disturbing sensibilities with his appearance by now. “Where to next?” he asked.

Goodsir plucked his coat and scarf from the back of his chair but didn’t put them on, just gathered them up over his arm. “Next door is just through this way,” he said, nodding sidelong to a drape hanging partially over a doorway. “It runs back-to-back with this place. I thought we might talk a little longer?”

Alexander was torn. On the one hand, he really did want to talk longer, get to know his companion better, before they went their separate ways into the chilly night. In addition, there was something both agreeable and exciting about following Goodsir’s lead on a further voyage of discovery. On the other: this was putting himself into precisely the sort of situation he had counseled his own patients against, if they could help it. And it was a matter of pride to him that he had vowed never to put his patients through anything he hadn’t, in some form or another, already undergone. This would be an experiment he would have to take very cautiously, and under equally careful observation. But it might just be worth the undertaking, to increase his own self-knowledge.

He explained this to Goodsir, less coherently than he would have preferred, but his companion seemed to get the gist of it, for he was at once contrite. “You’re a good man, Doctor MacDonald, and an excellent doctor. Certainly I wouldn’t force you into going anywhere you didn’t want to go. We can go elsewhere if you need to, or–?”

“I’d like to stay,” Alexander said, and he was glad not to hear his voice shake. “If we sit within close sight of the door, I should be all right.”

“A good plan,” Goodsir said, nodding. “I won’t be offended in the least if you feel the need to leave at any moment. Besides, the best thing to drink in this place isn’t alcoholic at all. It’s their hot tea.”

Now that _did_ sound like a more sensible way to round off a meal than the customary nightcap, in this weather. Alexander followed Goodsir through the draped door and into a rather more dimly-lit establishment, after the fashion of bars around the world. This one was less formidably quiet than “Eat Me,” but still muted. The lounge of a good club, as opposed to a library. There was indeed a free table for two close to the door, but out of the way of the draft coming from it as it opened, and Goodsir made a beeline for it.

Their server turned up very shortly after they’d seated themselves; they ran a tight ship here, Alexander was impressed to see.

What he hadn’t expected was for Goodsir to place their order using sign-language, the gestures tumbling out almost too quickly to follow. Their server nodded along, scribbling something down on a pad, and signed something to Goodsir, who made a graceful sign back that looked like a platonic blown kiss.

“I suppose I should’ve expected that,” Alexander said. The painted name of the place in the windows, reflected in the mirror behind the back of the bar, caught his eye: ‘Drink Me.’ Of course.

“They have ‘Sign Spoken Here’ painted on the door,” Goodsir said with a sage nod. “You can get by without it, they have special pads with checkboxes to fill in, but it’s a lot easier if you speak it, or arrive with someone who does.”

“O brave new world/That hath such people in’t,” Alexander quoted, wonderingly.

“’Tis new to thee,” Goodsir quoted back, with a raised eyebrow. And, yes, that was fair enough. Not Goodsir’s fault that Alexander’s worldview had been forcibly limited in his tender years, rather like Miranda’s on her island.

“What was that last sign you made?” Alexander asked, trying to mimic it.

“That one? That’s a decent impression of it. That’s ‘thank you’.” Goodsir made it again, as the server set down two steaming cups and two small jugs. Strangely, one of them didn’t look like milk. Alexander picked it up and sniffed it. Lemon juice.

“You might find that goes better with this kind of tea than milk,” Goodsir said, “they brew it with a mixture of spices, the way they do in India. Have a sip of it first.”

Alexander took a sip first. A hearty blend of Chinese and Indian teas, he was fairly certain, and a heady blend of spices that called to mind his mother’s Christmas cake. Quite bracing, really. It could go either with milk or juice, as far as he was concerned. He tried the juice, a judicious drop or two, and pushed the little jugs across.

Goodsir also anointed his tea with lemon, and they sat and drank awhile.

At length, Alexander spoke up: “You know, I’ve spent longer with you by now than with anyone I wasn’t related to. But it still feels like I hardly know you, and you hardly know me. Beyond what we put in the ads, that is. Go on and ask me something.”

“Tell me about yer muzzer, Herr Doktor,” Goodsir said in a bad Austrian accent, mischievously miming a flourish of a cigar.

Alexander shrugged nervously. More than likely it was a joke, but you never knew. “What’s to tell? We haven’t been on speaking terms lately. And no, Herr Doktor Freud, it doesn’t signify, we’re just not compatible people. Headstrong, in our different ways, I suppose.”

“I’m joking, honestly,” Goodsir said, more seriously. “But I’d like to get to know the man, not just the doctor. Tell me something about something you do when you’re not at work.”

“Swim, mostly. There _are_ such things as indoor swimming pools, in weather like this. Good exercise for the whole body, and relaxing for the mind. Though when the weather’s favorable, there’s nothing better than a good swim in the ocean. Feeling the swell against your limbs. You don’t get that in a pool.”

Goodsir nodded. “I expect Trudy would agree with you there.”

“Who’s Trudy?” Hard not to feel obscurely jealous, even though Alexander knew there was already another party in this relationship, as per the ad. 

“The person I said hello to on the way in to ‘Eat Me’. She works for the city now, she’s a swimming instructor and a good one, too. All sorts of people, tots and grown-ups alike, are becoming able swimmers thanks to her. I’ve no doubt she’s saved countless lives by making sure people don’t get themselves into trouble in the water, or giving them the skills to get out of trouble if they do. Before she had that fall all those years ago, she was a professional deep-sea swimmer, though. The first woman to swim the English Channel. And she swam it faster than the men! I’m kind of surprised you didn’t recognize her, though I suppose she’s been out of the public eye for a long time.”

Alexander felt his eyebrows climb. “Good heavens. Miss Ederle–?” She really hadn’t changed all that much, and yet he’d been too wrapped up in his immediate thoughts to observe her.

Goodsir had the grace to blush. “Shh, keep your voice down, not everyone in this place is as deaf as she is.”

Alexander lowered his voice, but couldn’t lower his excitement. “I remember the parade they gave for her. She was an inspiration to me, in her own way. A challenge.”

Goodsir smiled drolly. “And to me she’s one of the regulars. A friendly stranger, if you will. Funny the way the world works.”

“‘Only in New York,’ yes.” They both grinned at that. “What about you? What interests you the most? You mentioned photography.”

“On a strictly amateur basis, yes.” Goodsir looked unduly shy about the fact. “I mean, I’m not, ah, published or anything. Not yet, anyway. A friend of mine is trying to get me to put together a book or a magazine article of them.”

A scientific occupation combined with a creative soul; how interesting. “Portraits, or–?”

“No, no, nature photographs. There’s an extraordinary natural world right here, if you only pay attention to it.”

Curiouser and curiouser. “Forgive me, I can’t imagine this city as a place to study the natural world. Except for the museums and zoos, of course.”

Goodsir’s eyes fairly lit up. “That’s what I mean about paying attention. It’s not all rats and pigeons and cockroaches, even on the city’s streets. The inspiration came to me when I was still early in my career, making my way through the streets before dawn to start a shift. Of all things, a coyote crossed my path through the park one morning. Quite fearless, trotting along, minding its own business. I watched it go, and went on my way like anyone else in this city, but it set me thinking. As far as that coyote was concerned, we were the newcomers to its home, not the other way around. The whole history of this island since Peter Minuit purchased it has been a blink of Mother Nature’s eye. Assuredly, we’ve left our marks on it, but Nature will be here to take it back, long after we are gone.”

“You like to take the long view, don’t you, Doctor?” Alexander said, admiringly. It was a mind-set rather at odds with the other doctors of his acquaintance, still less the surgeons.

“There is wonder in it. It keeps one humble. And there’s always some unexpected discovery to make, if only to yourself, I find. I’m sure you could probably find similar wonders in the stars, but, ah, not so close to the Great White Way.” Goodsir gestured the gleam of the myriad watts of neon and tungsten incandescence extending for blocks around them, and far out into the clouds above, with both hands.

“Hah, no. Except for the planetarium, of course.” Alexander thought of how he’d visited it in younger days, and how marvelous it had been compared to the rather dreary-looking dioramas in the museum next door to it. Maybe he should go back there some day, just to enjoy the long view.

Goodsir flapped a hand dismissively. “Doesn’t count. It bears as little relationship to real stargazing as a motion picture does to real life. Good for training the eye, though. Friend of a friend has taken the most extraordinary photographs of the night sky from an observatory upstate.”

“Sounds fascinating,” Alexander said, and meant it. Seeing the stars for oneself would be an even greater treat. “Your social circle sounds quite flush with friends and acquaintances, between one thing and another. Certainly compared to mine. I confess I’m at a loss as to why you decided to place a lonely-hearts ad, when you had all those connections to draw upon.”

“Bold of you to assume that I hadn’t already attempted to draw on those connections,” Goodsir said, the light in his eyes fading somewhat. “Somehow they never seemed to answer the specific needs I-I was looking to fulfill.”

So that was it. The both of them, at the end of their respective tethers, like two trapeze-artists at the farthest end of their swings. Each wondering if the other was ready to make the leap. Each hoping they had the strength to make the catch, if it came to it.

“There’s someone else,” Goodsir continued, falteringly. “Silna. We’re still together, but, ah. They liked her latest sculptures so much they called her back to Canada before her fellowship was ended, to exhibit them on a cross-country tour. I got a wire saying she was talking to the Squamish council in Vancouver a few days ago. Then she had another appointment coming up with the Gwitchin, somewhere up in the Yukon.” He shook his head with a pained expression. “Chances are good I won’t be seeing her for a while.”

That explained the third member of the trio proposed in the ad, at last. Poor Goodsir! Even with modern communications, the distance between them must be eating at him. All the more if his sweetheart the sculptor was out in places where the communications were less modern than might be desired. “No question of joining her out there, then.”

“None,” Goodsir said fiercely. “We agreed on that. We each have our duties, to ourselves and to everyone else around us. I’d just be in her way in Canada. I don’t have much in the way of skills to offer up there. I don’t even speak all the languages she does: she’s quite the orator when she wants to be. We made, well, several agreements before she left. This is part of them. Make no mistake, if you want to back out of this at any point, you should feel entirely free to do so. Just like before. Say the word if you have to.”

Alexander raised a hand. Like before, it was his turn to make the leap, evidently; and he knew Goodsir would make the catch, now. Maybe Goodsir needed someone to catch him later, to turn him around so he wasn’t so much ensnared by his sense of duty. “I think I understand. The heart can’t help but want what it wants, and yours is big enough for more than one person at a time. It’s a new kind of arrangement to me, Doctor, I admit, but I’m game if you are.”

“I do wish you’d call me Harry.” Well, that was more than fair enough, considering the man had just nigh-on bared his soul.

Alexander tried to lighten the mood. “I might just call you ‘Professor’. I’m learning a lot from you.” Harry had a faintly strained look on his face. The way he had when he’d spoken of being afraid to be condescended to. “Not good? Beg pardon.”

“No offense taken,” Harry assured him hastily. “I know you meant well.”

“At home,” Alexander said, “they used to call me Sasha.”

Harry smiled, a little uncertainly. “I could see it. It’s a sweet name.”

“The reason was a little less sweet,” Alexander said. “I was accused of sympathizing with the Bolshevists as a young man, by my own flesh and blood no less. Simply because I don’t like to see people suffer, if it can be prevented. I still don’t, whether it’s a parent or a government causing the suffering. That’s why I chose to work for the city, when I got back into medicine.”

“Sounds as though you have more sense than the current crop of Bolsheviks. Though maybe they’ve changed now the new fellow’s in power. I was thinking of a different Sasha, one who was an aristocrat in a novel, quite a wild character. Have you read ‘Orlando’?”

“Not in many years. It caused quite the scandal, as I recall. Certainly in our house it did.”

“I’ll lend you my copy. I was just rereading the bit about the Frost Fair, recently. I’m glad we’re not at the point where the East River would freeze over, even if it would look pretty.”

“That would be just a little too cold, even for this Scotsman.” Alexander grimaced just to think of it.

“You’d have to put on furs, the way the Russians do,” Harry said, grinning. “I could see you in one of those fur hats they have. Would you object if _I_ called you ‘Sasha’? Just between us.”

“By all means, just between us.” It sounded better coming from Harry, and he said so. “If you don’t mind a work question: what’s something most people don’t know about what you do?”

“How resilient the human brain is. Like one of those gelatin puddings you see on television. Up to a point, it can take an extraordinary amount of punishment and still find a way to keep on ticking. It can even keep going when some of it is missing. You may recall the story of the unfortunate Phineas Gage. Nobody thought he’d survive for more than a few days after his accident, but he went back to work and lived for years afterwards. His brain did its best to pull itself back together. Like a pudding with a chunk taken out. Astonishing, if you think of it.”

“I’d always thought of it as more like a cathedral: the seat of something bigger than itself alone. A few pounds of flesh seems too small to account for the residence of a human soul.”

Harry frowned, leaning forward to rest his chin on the knuckles of one hand. “Really? To me, a cathedral’s too, ah, too fixed a structure to be compared to the brain. Even in old age it’s still possible for the thing to change, to evolve. For better or for worse.”

Alexander—Sasha?—allowed himself a half-smile. “If you think a cathedral is a fixed structure, my dear Harry, you’ve never seen St John the Divine.”

Harry laughed outright. “I haven’t seen it, I must admit. Not in person. But I do know what you mean. I could ask you the same question: what do you think people should know about what you do?”

An odd question in its way, but absolutely the right one. Words tumbled out of Sasha like water over a waterfall. “People have the mistaken impression that doctors like me have the capacity to change people, to alter how they think, the way they behave, the way you’d throw a switch on a model railroad. I only wish my job were that simple. It’s more like the patient is like a toy boat in a pond, and all I have to propel it across to the other side is a whole pile of stones to throw into the pond, hoping the ripples will carry it in the right direction, and trying not to sink the boat with the wrong stone as I do it. It’s hard work, and it takes more time than everyone expects, too. I don’t drive people to the right decision, I just try and open the right door and encourage them to step through. Sometimes I have to point a very powerful and very focused spotlight to the door to get them to notice it.”

Harry frowned. “I think I know the type. Headstrong, as you said. Or just strong-headed.”

Sasha nodded solemnly. It was all too easy to think of a recent patient who fit that description: how Mr Rawdon had slid into _delirium tremens_ with the inevitability of a Coney Island rollercoaster picking up speed on the way downhill. All that could be done was to administer a cocktail of medicines to alleviate the symptoms, and wait (and hope) for his condition to improve. Even then, it’d felt as though the difference between life and death was the thinness of a spider’s thread for a good fortnight. Heaven alone knew how Lady Beau-Lynn, who’d seldom left poor Rawdon’s side the whole time, maintained their strength under such conditions, but they’d been an extraordinary bulwark. And, once the worst of the storm had passed, they’d also been a safety-rope for Rawdon to haul himself back up to something resembling an even keel, absorbing his near-continuous protests as he did so. Would that more souls in the same plight had such a guide! Sasha himself, having tried the group-support approach without success for various reasons, had been forced to make the long, arduous march alone. It resembled less an attempt to summit one of the Himalayas, and more a protracted trek across a barren wilderness, with inadequate rations and no company. Lost deep behind the lines, and with safety still a long way off. Years had passed since then, but he knew where the process had left its marks, especially the ones that were only in his mind. Though he might prefer his own company much of the time, loneliness ached unbearably in ways he couldn’t put into words.

He explained this, in somewhat edited form, to Harry.

Harry nodded along with his narrative, and then froze like a startled rabbit. “Sasha—!”

“What’s the matter? Forgotten something?” Sasha wanted in that moment to clasp Harry by the hands, soothe him, but for a man who spoke in sign even some of the time that was tantamount to cutting out the tongue; so he just laid fingertips against the knuckles.

“Remembered something, more like. I know you can’t discuss details, but was this patient of yours last summer or thereabouts? Say, July?” Harry spoke with extraordinary intensity. (Sasha wanted to know, at a rather base level, what other passions could inspire that sort of expression. Those eyes were captivating.)

“Possibly,” he said, guardedly. It had indeed been July of last year, right around the Fourth, but, as Harry had said, he couldn’t discuss details. Patient privacy outweighed all other considerations.

“Only, it was around that time I recommended a friend dry out, he’d just been in an accident. Well, I say ‘accident’, it looked a lot more like attempted murder, but that’s not the point. He was rather proud of himself for having fixed up the writer of ‘Harry’s Song’ with the other Harry who inspired it. They were both his neighbors, you see.” Sasha was at a loss for words. It really was a small world, where a chart-topping songwriter and his muse could live cheek by jowl with a first-rate portrait photographer. “The point is, he’s done it again. He set us up!”

“I suppose in many professions you have to be a good judge of character,” Sasha said, at last. “Our mutual friend, if it is indeed he, knows his business: if we’re not alike exactly, we’re complements. What difference does it make if he was the one pulling strings to bring us together? I’d sooner that than suffer at the hands of someone who didn’t know either of us at all. Or worse, some manner of faceless machine or questionnaire trying to assemble the perfect couple scientifically.”

“Without consideration of those who don’t exactly fit the norm in various ways,” Harry sighed. “There’s that. This may be forward of me, but, ah, would you be interested in coming to my place, to see my nature photographs?”

“If you mean, would I come and see your etchings?” Sasha was on familiar territory with this offer, at least. It hadn’t been more than a handful of times in his checkered past that he’d made a house-call of that sort, but in this case it looked to be a precious intimacy over and above the usual.

Despite the fairly blatant innuendo of his own request, Harry blushed rather sweetly. “Yes.”

“I’m with you, then. Try it for a night, and take it from there.” Harry himself should be allowed his own way out of these negotiations, of that Sasha was sure.

“Sounds equitable.” Harry smiled. “I have a spare toothbrush.”

—Thank you, Sasha signed. Amazing how perfectly the gesture represented an extension of grace, a sharing.

“You learn fast,” Harry said, with a chuckle. “I’ll have to dig out my sign-language dictionary.”

“I’d like that,” Sasha said, sincerely. “I take it that’s what Silna speaks?”

“Mostly,” Harry said, simply, and they left.

* * *

“Hear that?” Harry stopped short on their way to the subway, swiveling on his toes to catch a faint sound from above them with his hearing-aid as they passed under the trees.

Sasha waited until he’d turned back to reply. “No. Yes. Some kind of hawk, isn’t it?”

“That’s the thing, it isn’t. It’s a blue jay pretending to be a hawk, to fool them into flying off. There it goes. D’you see it? They’re clever birds. Did you know they mate for life? Imagine. Flying about here and there, following the food wherever it’s plentiful, but always as a pair.”

“Hm. I knew redbirds did, but not blue ones too.”

* * *

Somewhere in Bryant Park, Sasha knew, there was a determined little snowdrop making the most of the lack of trampling feet to pierce its narrow way out of the semi-frozen dirt and burst into flower. Nothing as showy as the hothouse-grown scarlet rosebuds in all the florists’ windows, but a flower of love in his books all the same. Or, if not love as such, then the hope that preceded and accompanied it like a good friend. If this new thing between them made it to its first anniversary, he’d celebrate it with a snowdrop, he determined, and not a rose. Have courage, little snowdrop, he thought. Spring is on its way, even if the winds blow cold as yet.

**Author's Note:**

> ["Cinerama Holiday"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinerama_Holiday) had just premiered earlier that week. So basically Sasha took Harry to see a documentary in the 1955 equivalent of 3D IMAX. Nerrrrds.
> 
> An [automat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automat) was a real thing in the days before fast-food restaurants took over. New Jersey has just opened a [brand-new one](https://abc7ny.com/automat-jersey-city-retro-throwback/10070679/) in 2021, capitalizing on the coronavirus pandemic.
> 
> [Trudy Ederle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gertrude_Ederle) was as much of a formidable woman in the "Brackish Ballads" universe as in ours - despite becoming profoundly deaf as a result of measles. She died in 2003 at the age of 98.
> 
> Title from John Masefield's [The Everlasting Mercy](http://www.famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/john_masefield/poems/15268), another story of recovery.


End file.
